In the Silence
by kaminoko-x
Summary: It isn't raining when Azula dies. It wouldn't be, it couldn't be- but it should be. So this is how we mourn. /one-shot /dedicated to Cocopuff-chan, strong until the very end and always an inspiration.


**In the Silence**

...

_don't you dare look out your window,  
darling, everything's on fire,  
the war outside our door keeps raging on,  
hold on to this lullaby, even when the music's gone._

-Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars

...

It isn't raining when Azula dies.

'_It wouldn't be,'_ Mai thinks. _'Azula may have been insane, but she was never stupid. She was going after the Avatar, after all. She would have never given him such an advantage- especially with his waterbending master always by his side.' _Azula had attacked at noon that day, and night had now come, revealing a bare sliver of curving white glowing softly in the dark sky. She'd been crazy enough to be unpredictable, and still intelligent enough to nearly succeed with her assassination. Aang is still alive, fortunately. Mai isn't sure how the slowly healing world would handle the sudden death of the Avatar, but even the best scenarios leave her grim. So she doesn't regret helping Zuko. Instead, something like coldness has settled into her bones- not quite anger, not quite sorrow, but not the blankness she always wears like a mask. She feels calm, as if nothing has changed, like this is all a dream. She knows Azula's death hasn't sunk in just quite yet. She knows that she'd been part of the team that had taken the deranged princess out. She knows, but she's been okay for the past few hours, listening to Ty Lee's sniffles and everything Zuko isn't saying.

'_I have my family and I have Zuko,' _she thinks, staring at the red of the setting sun. _'And I have only two friends in the world, and I just killed one of them.' _Because Azula had been her friend, hadn't she? Mai doesn't have many people she's close to, and Azula never been nice or particularly caring, but she'd always been there. Ty Lee and Azula had been much closer, but Mai thinks she has the right to call Azula her friend, after all the time she spent with the princess. Those times hadn't been the best, but they had been good days- scheming together, smug and victorious and on top of the world.

'_I just killed Azula,'_ she thinks, and with that, the dam breaks, and a sudden rush of emotion comes crashing down on her like a tidal wave. It's beyond sadness- it's this terrible, despairing misery. It feels so heavy, curling in her chest until she feels like she can't breathe, and it feels like it will never go away. She lets out a barely audible, strangled gasp, and her face twists ever so slightly, eyebrows drawing up just a fraction and eyes tearing. She doesn't cry- she's been wearing a blank mask for so long that she can't quite manage to let go of her composure. Instead, her mouth opens, almost against her will, and she chokes out a wobbling melody.

It had been years ago, while Zuko's father had been alive. She'd heard a lullaby in the Earth Kingdom and privately thought it was gorgeous. And then-

"Mai, you always had the most beautiful voice. Would you give us the pleasure of a song?" Azula had asked, Ty Lee bouncing beside her. She had been floored. Azula never complimented her, certainly not in public. But beyond her shock- there it had been. Contempt flashing within those gold eyes, but not directed at her- at the musicians someone had brought in as entertainment. So, not a true compliment, but a desire to embarrass some annoying entertainers who thought they could sing. And yet, it meant Azula thought her voice was _better_.

She had started with the first note of that Earth Kingdom lullaby. And now, she does the same. It is a tribute to the fallen, to those who are no more.

...

It isn't raining when Azula dies.

'_It couldn't be_,' Ty Lee thinks. '_She was never the type to have a dramatic death, like the plays we always see on Ember Island_.' Besides, Azula is fire, through and through. Why should she challenge anybody in rain?

'_Was,'_ she thinks. _'Azula _was_ fire._' Ty Lee's already crying. Tears had been streaking down her face as she'd tried to block her friend's chi, because she knew that unlike the time she and Mai had betrayed her in the war, there was no going back. They had no choice- there had been innocent people, innocent children around. They had needed to stop Azula right then and there, and there had only been one way.

'_This isn't fair_,' she thinks. '_Not to Mai, not to Zuko. Not to me- I want her back, my best friend, she's been everything to me for so long. This isn't fair_.' But life isn't fair, so now she's crying, sitting here with Mai and Zuko, who is holding his sister's dead body in the courtyard. They'd managed to bring her down near sunset, after hours of frantic chasing and panicked rush, and as night falls, Ty Lee cries. Zuko is silent and dry eyed, and Mai's face is blank. They're not crying with her, but Ty Lee doesn't care. She's always been the open one, laid bare like the wide blue sky, so she doesn't hide anything now. Ty Lee sobs under the stars, and when Mai nearly breaks down, but sings instead, her sobs turn to shaking shoulders and sniffs. When Mai grows quiet once more, she tries to breathe properly, but the tears well up again and she wails, a high pitched keen cutting through the silence of the near empty courtyard, like blades through air. She surprises herself; she's heard similar sounds before- during a peasant funeral, and when a woman received the news of her dead soldier husband, and many other times during the war.

She never really understood it, but she knows now. It is a desolate sound of hearts breaking and wretched grief, anguished and raw. It is a goodbye.

...

It isn't raining when Azula dies.

'_It should be,'_ Zuko thinks. _'It should be raining and I should be crying.'_ Isn't that how it's supposed to go? The world's supposed to cry for the tragic girl who went crazy because of her father.

'_It should rain,_' he thinks, '_Because this is a tragedy and this should have never happened.'_ (Azula, the girl who loved her father so much; but Ozai took her love and blind dedication and manipulated her and used her to kill people and ruin lives, and after all she'd done, it drove her insane that he didn't love her, that she'd never be good enough. Her friends' betrayal had been the push that sent the dominos clattering, but who set them up in the first place?)

And he's supposed to be crying like Ty Lee, because she's his _sister_, and this a _tragedy_. But he isn't. It hurts- Agni, it _hurts_ to see her lifeless eyes like this, but the tears don't come. He has already cried so much, he knows, and he thinks that maybe he's cried enough. There's no tears left, just an aching, empty hole in his chest, and heartache he knows he will always carry.

Several weeks ago, news of Azula's escape had been reported. He had insisted on leading the team to track her down, Ty Lee and Mai already bouncing and armed, faces serious, ready to accompany him. Azula was their friend, Azula was his sister. It was their right and their duty to deal with her. Aang reluctantly let them go, but in the end, they caught up with her just in time to save Aang. They chased her as she fled from the failed assassination of the Avatar. And by evening, whirling blue heat had been everywhere, burning soldiers and civilians and children alike, coming dangerously close to setting markets and the surrounding buildings on fire. And there was lightning crackling through the air- there was only so many places Zuko could be and with Azula flinging electric blue in every direction, it was a complete nightmare. Ty Lee tried to block her chi, but had to flip away from flame, so Mai stepped in, and tried to keep Azula away from the civilians, throwing knives and sai and anything she could get her hands on to corner her. Zuko had seen an opening, and with dao singing and fire whipping around him, he had delivered the fatal stab right through her chest.

Now, as Zuko clutches her still-warm body, he thinks there are too many what-ifs, especially with Azula. Ignoring the blood on his clothes, he looks pensively at the dead girl.

'_Azula… if we hadn't been the royal family- or if Dad wasn't so messed up, if Mom hadn't left, if I had said "I love you" and you'd believed me… would we be like this?' _he wonders_. 'I wish so much that we hadn't been, that we had been ordinary and common, if that meant we'd have grown up like real family. Because we're siblings, aren't we? I'm your older brother, you're my baby sister- and yet, here I am, your killer. So I'm sorry. For not protecting you, for not being there, for everything. I love you, and I'm sorry.'_

He sits in the coolness of the summer night, heart heavy and eyes weary. He regrets wasting his time with her. He regrets not playing with her on the childish insistence that she was too young and a girl. He regrets telling her to go away whenever she asked him to help her, he regrets not hugging her at every opportunity he had. Too many regrets and too many what-ifs, he thinks, and wonders why it had to come to this.

Ty Lee and Mai stay by his side in quiet companionship. The bubbly chi-blocker had sobbed her eyes out and Mai had sung briefly, softly, her notes forced and voice cracking. But now, they're like him- the tears are gone, and they've gone quiet. So the three of them sit together in silent vigil under the night sky.

.

They burn her body at sunrise. Zuko, before placing Azula on the pyre, closes his eyes and pulls her close, holding his sister like he hadn't done since they were children. He breathes in her scent, then brushes a kiss on her forehead, and places her onto the wood. With a quick breath, he lights the pyre, then stands silently with Mai and Ty Lee, and watches the flames burn brightly, like she once had, long before Ozai began to twist her.

'_If it hadn't been like this- no, even though it is like this, I hope you knew I love you,' _he thinks.

But there are no words that will reach beyond a corpse, so he says nothing.

_This is letting go._

So this is how we mourn.

...

fin.

* * *

AN: So I wasn't going to put this on fanfiction, but I'm posting in honor of a friend of mine who passed away from cancer today. This is dedicated to her.

Cocopuff-chan, I'm glad you're not suffering anymore and that you get to hang out in heaven with Jesus (partaaayy). We're going to miss you for now, so have fun in paradise, and we'll see you again someday.

- kaminoko-x


End file.
